Instead of a usual blog post, this week I bring you my completed story for COMM-425 about PBS and their recent kerfuffle with a
Not usually the domain of scandal or
controversy, PBS has been exactly that since the Jan. 23 broadcast of an
episode of Nova examining the rise of drone warfare.
“We always have an eye on PBS,” said Peter
Hart, the activism director at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a
media watchdog group. “That night, I noticed people commenting about the
episode on Twitter, and I thought it was curious,” Hart said.
What Hart and other viewers noticed that
evening was a simple error on the part of Nova: they had failed to
adequately disclose that Lockheed Martin was an underwriter for the episode.
Even worse, Lockheed Martin is a major drone manufacturer. The resulting
fallout has caused hundreds of displeased viewers to write to PBS, and has, in
the opinion of several alternative media experts, shaken the foundation of
public service, independent media that PBS is supposed to stand for.
“This particular program would have been
much better off without Lockheed Martin’s support,” said PBS ombudsman Michael
Getler. “It was a good and useful program, but the sponsorship should have been
more clearly identified,” said Getler.
The program, called “The Rise of The Drones,”
was an in-depth look at the emerging military technology. It featured an
interview with Abe Karem, often dubbed the “father” of the predator drone.
According to Hart, PBS completely failed to mention that Karem’s current
company has a business relationship with Lockheed Martin.
Though
the TV broadcast included a brief underwriting message about Lockheed Martin at
the start, that credit was removed from the webcast, and the company was not
credited on Nova’s website for the program. After the ensuing kerfuffle, Nova retroactively
added the credit to the webcast and their website.
According to Kevin Gosztola, a journalist at
the progressive news site FireDogLake who was the first to write about
the Nova controversy, PBS has a publically stated
three-pronged test for assessing bias. The test determines, first, whether the
underwriter has exercised editorial control, second, whether the public might
perceive that the underwriter has exercised editorial control, and, lastly,
whether the public might perceive that the program is on PBS mainly because it
promotes the underwriter’s products.
“Judging by the high-minded and
unusually strongly-worded ethical standards PBS has set for themselves, this is
an absolutely clear-cut violation,” said Hart. “ The question is really whether
PBS believes its own rules – and I don’t think they do,” said Hart.
Gosztola concurred, and said that the
increasing scarcity of revenue for PBS has hamstrung the public broadcaster. “I
am a supporter and lover of public media, but parts of what PBS is producing
these days can look like propaganda for their sponsors, and that is what parts
of the drone program reminded me of,” said Gosztola.
According to Getler, the PBS ombudsman’s
office has received just under 1,000 viewer complaints about the drone program
to date. Getler said the number of complaints ticked sharply upwards after
Gosztola and Hart posted critical reports on their respective websites within
days of each other.
Producers at PBS and Nova reacted
defensively to criticism, writing in Getler’s ombudsman column that “Lockheed
Martin’s sponsorship of Nova is not a violation of PBS
underwriting guidelines,” emphasizing that the corporation had no editorial
input on the program, and stating that PBS takes “our public trust
responsibility very seriously.”
“Unfortunately,” said Hart, responding to PBS’
statement, “the appearance of a conflict of interest, according to PBS
guidelines, is, in of itself, a conflict of interest. Just saying ‘we’re Nova and
no one controls us editorially’ is not enough: you have to either not broadcast
the program or change the rulebook, but you can’t just do neither,” he said.
PBS, beset by the dual plagues of
declining viewer support and declining government allocation of funds, has
increasingly turned to corporate sponsors and underwriters in recent years for
a reliable stream of income. While many argue this has been a necessary shift
to keep PBS afloat, Gosztola and Hart said this is an action which has also
alienated PBS from its core value of public service broadcasting that is
commercial-free and independent.
“PBS is strained for cash, and Lockheed
Martin has a lot of money,” said Gosztola. “Nova has to defend their
donor, and that’s why I think they were so defensive in their reply to
criticism,” he said.
“It’s inevitable; this kind of ethical crisis
is going to happen again. I think PBS likes the philosophical idea of what
their underwriting rules stand for,” said Hart. “They would rather stick with
those rules and deal with the occasional underwriter hypocrisy than work to
find new revenue resources,” he said.
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Source List
1. Kevin Gosztola (Journalist for FireDogLake.com’s “The
Dissenter”)
· 574-261-4465
2. Michael Getler (PBS Ombudsman)
· 703-739-5768
3. Peter Hart (Activism Director at FAIR)
· 212-633-6700
Supplementary Links
